I'm an LA-based writer and management consultant. I was an adviser and editor for many years for the father of modern leadership studies, the late USC professor Warren Bennis. And over the past twenty years, I’ve been a chief storyteller for USC, during a time in which Bennis and other leaders helped it skyrocket in global reputation and productivity. I bring a different perspective to leadership--some sober perspective about the realities of being "in charge," along with advice on how to tell great stories that mobilize great communities. I've written for dozens of publications around the world, including the Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor and Japan Times. I serve as a University Fellow at USC’s Center for Public Diplomacy and am a member of the Pacific Council for International Policy. My book Leadership Is Hell (Figueroa Press, 2014) is available on Amazon; all proceeds benefit programs that make college accessible to promising LA urban schoolchildren.

How To Find A Dependable Millennial Employee (Hint: She Probably Voted Republican)

Are enough young adults ready to hit the ground running along a meaningful career path? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of my friends manages a research center at a college that’s well-known for drawing very bright students.

She’s a die-hard Democrat, but she confided once to me that when it’s time to hire student workers, she swings Republican.

“I’ll look at the job candidates’ resumes, and if I can see that one of them’s a girl who’s been, say, a part of the college Republican group, I give her a few extra points,” she admitted.

She explained that such a worker tends to bring a couple of advantages to the office. First, women often seem more mature than their male counterparts at that age. Second, for some reason, these active GOPers seem to have a level of conscientiousness and follow-through that she finds somewhat lacking on the part of young adults who are on her own side of the political aisle.

“They’re not as likely to call and say that they’ve decided to stay home to study for a mid-term exam,” she told me. “They’re less likely to run off to Vegas for an extended birthday celebration. They’re more likely to take their responsibilities seriously–and less likely to ditch them without any sense of guilt.”

The Elephant in the Room?

Granted, this is purely anecdotal. Yet I hear a ring of truth there. Consider a recent piece in TIME magazine that suggested a link between how you act and how you vote:

Research by Sam Gosling, at the University of Texas, has found that liberals generally score higher than conservatives on the trait of “openness to experience” … Conservatives are more likely to stick with what is familiar, what is tried and true. Hence, they are more likely to use a PC than a Mac and are more likely to stick with that PC’s default browser, Internet Explorer. Conservatives score higher than liberals on the trait of conscientiousness. They are more organized (neat desks), punctual, and self-controlled (rather than emphasizing self-expression).

That brings up the elephant that’s, well, actually not in the room: Most millennials aren’t female Republicans who rigidly stick to a schedule in a way that older managers and co-workers appreciate. And most millennials do seem to have a reputation among others for being overly casual about their jobs and careers. Is it possible that they have such a casual tendency at exactly the wrong time—such as in our own swampy and unstable economic moment?

On Tuesday, Young Invincibles, a group that advocates for young adults, issued a bracing report that noted the unemployment rate for millennials (which it defined as workers 18-34) has remained stuck in double-digits for 70 consecutive months. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce has likewise found young workers today losing ground compared with previous generations in wages, workforce participation, and net worth, with the losses deepest for younger men. Add in mounting student debt, as well as delays in family formation and homeownership, and phrases like “lost generation” don’t seem excessive.

Shara Senderoff and Jamie Gutfreund, savvy analysts of the dynamics of millennials in the workplace, opened my eyes to how older generations can learn how to understand, appreciate and motivate millennials. I wrote here and here about their findings and insights, which I find to be both hopeful and helpful.

And in a similar vein, veteran tech journalist David Spark has offered numerous insights into how to recruit millennial employees.

On the Other Hand …

At the same time, other workplace experts and managers speak to me in more cautious terms about how many millennials aren’t putting themselves in a position to succeed.

My colleague Erin Robbins O’Brien regularly hires and manages millennials in her role as COO of Ginzametrics, a leading hi-tech SEO and content platform based in the heart of San Francisco.

O’Brien—who describes herself as bordering precariously, age-wise, between the Xers and the millennials—says she believes that the goals and aspirations of millennials aren’t much different from those of their older colleagues. “It’s hard for previous generations,” she says, “to hear that the millennial generation champions wanting to work somewhere meaningful, aspires to do something great, and wants balance in their lives … because it implies that the rest of us don’t.”

She hastens to add that she doesn’t use the dreaded E word to describe millennials. “I don’t think they’re being entitled,” she says. “I think they’re more misled as to what’s a right and what’s a privilege.”

[Note: In another piece in this series, I do touch on how, if millennials have indeed been “misled,” it may be because their baby boomer parents raised them to have certain expectations that Gen Xers may find to be excessive or unreasonable.]

She says, “Assuming that workplace rights should include a variety of perks and flexibility makes it difficult to keep continuity or to reward employees at smaller organizations … Asking small to mid-sized organizations to be more like Google'Google' isn’t a relevant request. Google wasn’t even like Google in their early days. It took a lot of people working long hours in a garage to make their success happen.”

O’Brien counsels ambitious millennials that handling imperfection and tedium is a necessary part of building an organization that can grow and that can develop the flexibility and inspiration that most employees want. “There has to be some understanding,” she says, “that in order to learn to do what you love, you have to learn to do a lot of things … and sometimes you have to learn to do them in a place that isn’t perfect, so that you can build your version of perfection down the road.”

That may be powerful wisdom, especially given the fearsome prospects of a “lost generation” that Brownstein alluded to. After all, there are only so many young female fans of Mike Huckabee to fill key spots in our organizations. We’re going to need all hands on deck.

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